Wednesday, July 14, 2010

Some Thoughts About Yesterday's Encounter

The noodle-brained ones at the Post Office did get me thinking. Perhaps that's their function, though they probably wouldn't like the direction of my thoughts.

First, I found this site: Politifact. The link takes you to a page where President Obama's actions are rated versus his campaign promises, and, "LaRouchies" aside, he really isn't doing too badly. The "In the Works" category is the largest, followed by "Promises Kept." "Stalled" is the next largest, and it's difficult for me to blame the President for the actions of an antagonistic Capitol Hill. "Compromise" is next, no doubt in an effort to reduce the "Stalled" numbers, and "Promises Broken" is small, larger only than "Not Yet Rated." I found several sites rating the President this way, and all were more-or-less similar. Frankly, I think he's doing pretty well, for less than halfway through his term.

So that was reassuring.

I googled Lyndon LaRouche. Wikipedia has a fascinating article about him. He started out as a Quaker, went to war in WWII as a noncombatant...and emerged, a Communist! That surprised me, as I read of his joining faction after faction and splitting off (or being expelled) from them all at one time or another. In the early 70s, in rather an abrupt about-face, he became a right-winger and conspiracy nut, believing that an alphabet soup of organizations was trying to assassinate him. In an action disgustingly reminiscent of Hitler's Brown shirts, his boys started physically attacking the leftist groups he had been supporting only months earlier. Jeff Hendren, on Facebook, compared LaRouche's current cult to Scientology in their level of creepiness. When I read about his "ego-stripping" (having a large group pick on and verbally abuse one member until the member breaks down--for the member's own good, of course), I could see Jeff's point. He is said to substitute the word "British" for "Jew" in his diatribes, thinking (I guess) that it's better to be seen as an Anglophobe than an anti-Semite. That would, of course, explain yesterday's guys ranting and railing against the President's association with BP!

According to the Wiki article, which quotes other writers, LaRouche thinks he should rule.

According to Cyprian Blamires, LaRouche has called for a dictatorship led by a "humanist elite," and has shown hostility toward a range of targets, including feminism, homosexuality, environmentalism, and organized labor. Tim Wohlforth and Dennis Tourish write that the parallel between LaRouche's thinking and the classic fascist model is "striking:"

'LaRouche, like Mussolini and Hitler before him, borrowed from Marx yet changed his theories fundamentally. Most important, Marx's internationalist outlook was abandoned in favor of a narrow nation-state perspective. Marx's goal of abolishing capitalism was replaced by the model of a totalitarian state that directs an economy where ownership of the means of production is still largely in private hands. The corporations and their owners remain in place but have to take their orders from LaRouche. Hitler called the schema "National Socialism." LaRouche hopes the term "the American System" will be more acceptable.'

(bolding mine)

So, how do his minions justify calling themselves Democrats?

Thank you very much, LaRouchies, but no thanks!

Tracie found this site: PublicEye.org. The link takes you to a page that has a long list of articles debunking Lyndon LaRouche. Enjoy.